Dave Duncan: The Alchemists pursuit

"Unless you believe in extraordinary coincidences it is," I said. "This must take precedence." I explained about the other note, giving her the wording verbatim.

"Then that wasn't your fault!" she declared. "It was ambiguous and perhaps Battista himself did not understand that his master just wanted to tell Nostradamus something, not consult him as a doctor. The wonder is that a servant can write at all, not that he is unskilled at writing letters."

We passed the great doors to the piano nobile and started down the next flight.

"It shouldn't take long," I said. "We can start work on the murder right after."

She smiled-oh, how she can smile! "I must change, anyway. I can't go exploring with you in these clothes. Drop me at my door and pick me up as soon as you have paid your respects to sier Giovanni."

By the time we reached the watergate, Giorgio was ready for us and the Gradenigo boat had already gone. I handed Violetta out through the arches and then joined her aboard. It may seem strange to take a boat to go to the house next door, but there is no pedestrian fondamenta on our side of the Rio San Remo. There is a narrow ledge, though, along which an agile young man can work his way to the calle dividing the two buildings and then on to 96's watergate. Corrado was already well on his way along it, so that he could hand Violetta ashore when she arrived. At his age even a touch of such a woman's fingers is enough to remember, and in his case to brag about to his twin.

It took us only a few minutes to arrive at the Gradenigo palace, which is so large and sumptuous as to make even Ca' Barbolano look so-so. There were at least a dozen gondolas outside the watergate, and about twice as many gondoliers waiting in the loggia, gossiping in threes and fours. Only the rich use two boatmen to a boat, so I did not need the livery and insignia to tell me that a widespread family was gathering for the deathwatch. I noted a couple of boats pulling away, though, and assumed that they were now carrying the news to more distant, or less wealthy, relations.

I was too late.

At the exact moment I stepped ashore, the bell of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari began to toll a few streets away. The bored boatmen made the sign of the cross and then carried on with their talk. They had already been informed of the death.

Had the dying man shared his urgent message with someone else? I had no need to knock, for the door stood open, and an elderly manservant waited there holding a piece of paper. I thought of San Pietro at the Gates greeting Giovanni Gradenigo.

"I am Alfeo Zeno. Friar Fedele sent for me. I have come too late?"

He bowed a smallish bow, frowning at my garb, then glanced down at his list. "Indeed you have, clarissimo." He looked behind him, into the grandiose hall. "The friar is coming now."

I walked into the great hall and wished I had time to admire the enormous splendor of marble, glass, and gilt-about a week would do. It all seemed like a monument to human folly in the presence of death, but Gradenigo would have seen it as evidence that he had preserved, and doubtless expanded, the family fortune. They would be reluctant to admit it, but the Venetian aristocracy admires rapacity above all.

Several people were standing around or moving about their business with suitable gravity, but I went straight for the priest, who was obviously leaving. We met halfway between door and staircase; I bowed.

Bareheaded and barefoot, Friar Fedele wore the gray habit of the Order of Friars Minor, with the belt cord dangling at his side tied in the required three knots, representing his vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. Obedience is an old Venetian virtue that the Great Council enthusiastically preaches to the commonality, but poverty and chastity are rarely popular at any level.

The fringe around his tonsure was brown but his beard was closer to red. He seemed about thirty or so, with a weather-beaten ascetic face, humorless and arrogant, a face chiseled out of granite, more suited to a Dominican than a Franciscan. Personally I like my clergy to be New Testament, warm and forgiving. One glance at Friar Fedele told you right away that he was straight out of the Book of Judges, all blood, blame, and brimstone. He looked me over, his gaze lingering for a moment on my rapier and dagger.

I held up the letter with his name on it. "I am Zeno, Brother. I fear I have arrived too late."

He nodded. "Do not grieve unduly, Alfeo. He was much confused at the end. I wrote that letter because he insisted and we must humor the dying, but I don't think you would have heard anything of importance. He might not have known you."

"I am sure he would not, because we never met. I assume that he wanted to confide something to my master, Doctor Nostradamus, and asked for me because I am the doctor's aide?"

He gave me the same answer any other slab of granite would-silence.

"Do you know what messer Gradenigo wanted to tell my master?"

Fedele shrugged. "I cannot say. He was babbling much of the time."

"He was elderly, I believe."

"He had passed his allotted span, yes."

"But a good man, from all accounts." I believe in being charitable to the dead, lest they come back and haunt me.

"He was a fine Christian, a devoted husband and father, and he served the Republic well. He went peacefully to his reward." Fedele raised his hand to bless me.

I doffed my bonnet. Then I stood up and watched him stride away with his habit swirling around his ankles, bare feet making no sound on the terrazzo. I cannot say. Fedele had not said that he did not know. It was an odds-on bet that he knew perfectly well but had been told under the seal of the confessional. I glanced around the hall and decided that now was definitely not the time to pry. Whatever the dead man's problem had been, if anyone knew it, it would keep.

I went back out to the bustling landing stage and had to wait a few minutes before Giorgio was able to slip his boat in close enough for me to board. His oar stroked the water and we were on our way. The Frari bell was still tolling.

"Too late?"

"Too late," I agreed. "The dying man wanted to tell the Maestro something, but he's never been a patient or a client. Why the Maestro? Odd."

"He was a good man, they say." By "they" he meant the other boatmen, who often know more than most people know they know. "He did things for the poor."

Being one of those, I said a prayer for his soul.

Back at Number 96, I disembarked. "The lady said she would be ready when we returned, but don't count on it."

Giorgio grinned and rubbed his trim beard with the back of a hand. He is a small man for a gondolier, stronger than he looks. "It is you I distrust, Alfeo."

"Not today," I said. "Or at least, not yet." I unlocked the bawdy house door and went in. Violetta's apartment is one floor up, and that part of the house is not bawdy, just voluptuous.

So where do we start?" she asked as we descended the stairs. She no longer teetered on ten-inch soles. Paint and silks had gone, and she was enveloped in the neck-to-shoe brown dress of a domestic servant. Her magnificent hair was hidden under a shawl that hung to about where her calves must be. Even so, she would catch every male eye within eyeshot.

"With the puzzle, of course," I said.

"Which puzzle?"

"Why her body was not looted of valuables. Which were?"

"Pearl earrings, a gold ring, and a gold brooch with an amber pebble enclosing an insect. That's not to my taste, but worth a lot as a curiosity. Her gown was…" She shuddered and tightened her grip on my hand. "I suppose the sea will have ruined it. And she wore a string of pearls worth at least a hundred ducats."

"You are joking!"

"No, I am not! They once belonged to Dogaressa Zilia Dandolo, the wife of Doge Lorenzo Priuli."